Pause Menu won't activate when I hit escape

Question

I've just started teaching myself coding, and I've been watching Brackey's tutorial series. I'm trying to create a Pause menu, and I've followed along with the video, but for some reason I can't get the menu to activate when I hit escape. I've double checked the code and it should be working, when compared to what's on screen. Is there something I'm missing?

using System.Collections;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using UnityEngine;

public class PauseMenu : MonoBehaviour
{
    public static bool isGamePaused = false;

    public GameObject pauseMenu;

    void Update()
    {
        if (Input.GetKeyDown(KeyCode.Escape))
        {
            if (isGamePaused)
            {
                ResumeGame();
            }
            else 
            {
                PauseGame();
            }
        }
    }
    void ResumeGame()
    {
        pauseMenu.SetActive(false);
        Time.timeScale = 1f;
        isGamePaused = false;
    }

    void PauseGame()
    {
        pauseMenu.SetActive(true);
        Time.timeScale = 0f;
        isGamePaused = true;
    }
}

Answer 1

Now that I can see the relevant code and hierarchy I believe I see the issue. In your script, you are checking for input in the Update() which is only called when the GameObject the script component is on is active in the hierarchy.

When you are toggling your pause, you are activating and deactivating the GameObject that you assign in the inspector. As the object you assigned in the GameObject that has the script, the Update() will never be called after it is disabled.

You have a few options, but the easiest one would be to drag in the reference of the panel pauseMenu as the reference object to toggle in your script instead of the Canvas object you currently have. That way the Canvas can act as a manager for the pauseMenu, toggling it when the input changes.